Archive for February, 2004
Interview with Simfreaks.com’s Heather Castillo
In a recent online post, the universally respected simfreaks.com owner and moderator and brilliant Sims content producer Heather Castillo had some harsh words for EA, citing Don Hopkin’s interview along the way.
Full StoryInterview with Nyk: Legendary Mazebot Programmer
In this interview we speak with Nyk, programmer of the legendary BMazer maze bot. He talks about some of his other creations (including the PetID bot) and his current projects: pizza bots, code bots, band bots, etc. How does he answer his critics? And just why does he do it? The money? The chicks? Free [...]
Full StoryInterview with a Six Figure Simolean Seller
In this interview we meet a well known TSO and eBay simolean seller. Badly injured ten years ago in a steel factory explosion, he has lived on disability since then, but this year he will report an income of around $100,000 US from selling simoleans. He describes how he got into the business, how his [...]
Full StoryEditorial: Stop the Cheetah-Deleting Madness!
As the dispute between Polie Bear and Nick spins out of control, we have to ask ourselves: why on earth did EA take sides in this and exacerbate the problem? In effect, the dispute between Polie and Nick is a dispute between two 14 yr old friends (sometimes best friends, according to Polie). Whatever the [...]
Full StoryThe Issue of Virtual Slave Auctions
In a situation that is currently being discussed on a Second Life message board, Linden Labs moved against a property that was advertising a sexually oriented “slave auction” on the grounds that the slavery aspects of the roleplay were offensive. (The adult theme was presumably a non-issue since 2L is adults only, unless one wants [...]
Full StoryDiscussion: The Joy of Cybersex or a recipe for Carpal Tunnel Syndrome?
I was just rereading the following classic description of cybersex by Julian Dibbell: “Netsex, tinysex, virtual sex — however you name it, in real-life reality it’s nothing more than a 900-line encounter stripped of even the vestigial physicality of the voice. And yet, as many a wide-eyed newbie can tell you, it’s possibly the headiest [...]
Full StoryPolie Bear: Alphaville’s Army of One
Yesterday I received the following intriguing piece of spam from Nick, ex-roomie of Van’s Free Money for Newbies, where he was Julia, and ex of the Royalty Cash scam house, where he was Sanjiro, and sometime member of the Armone mafia: xxx (4:07:18 AM): I need a new account, anybody wanna give/sell? (lost my best [...]
Full StoryDesperately Seeking Oblivious Sims
I’ve now talked to sims in both the Bay Area and the NYC area that have received some version of this letter. A slightly earlier version was also posted by Tigger on sims stratics. It appears that EA was desperately trying to locate some sims (any sims!) for some sort of televised PR exercise. No [...]
Full StoryLondon Times Essay: Griefers and Group Formation in Alphaville
by Peter Ludlow About two months ago I was asked to write an essay for the Times of London on my thoughts about the situation in Alphaville. What The Times wanted was something that recapitulated the BBC Online article about how letting people be what they wanted led to anarchy. What they got from me [...]
Full StoryInterview with Don Hopkins
In this interview, Don Hopkins describes his early days on the Sims development team with Will Wright (back when the project was called Dollhouse) and the difficulties the team had fighting EA’s attempts to terminate the project, and then preventing EA from gutting it of interesting content (like architecture tools). Even now, he claims that [...]
Full Story
Recent Comments